Flora and Fauna collection

The Flora and Fauna collection was composed by the company United Distillers (now known as Diageo), in order to promote the products from their different lesser known distilleries to a wider audience. Being the owners of the most popular whisky in the world (Johnnie Walker), the great majority of the whisky distilled goes into blends. The idea with the Flora and Fauna series was to offer the public a chance to try the original single malt spirit, pre-blending.

When the series was first released, it had no actual name. The term “Flora and Fauna” was coined by famous whisky and spirits writer Michael Jackson. He came up with the name based on the images printed on the labels, as these images primarily displayed plants and animals. That name stuck, and is nowadays commonly used to describe the whiskies in the series.

The series originally started in 1991 and at the time contained 22 different whiskies bottled at 43% ABV.

Mid-Strength flora and fauna whiskies

When the mid-strength whiskies were originally released, most of them were packaged in wonderful wooden boxes. Later subsequent releases of the same bottles saw wood replaced with cardboard, and eventually, the bottles were sold without any boxes at all. Various releases exist, with grey, white and black caps.

Of all of the above, Speyburn was sold off by United Distillers shortly after the release of the whisky to the series, and thus there are a limited amount of bottles of that expression available, making it highly collectable.

A number of the flora and fauna distilleries no longer are owned by Diageo (the successor to United Distiller), because they closed (Pittyvaich, Rosebank). Others, like Glen Spey were sold off. Especially the cask strength and wooden box editions are becoming harder to find (and therefore more expensive).